Editorial: October 17,
2004

THE
EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES.

By Robert Bly

In reality, the horrible event called the Bush presidency is over now. It
remains only to start the sort of planning that enabled MacArthur to retrieve
what he could from the fall of Manila. Elaborate failures in high places
have happened before. It’s a repeating event in American history, and
in the history of every nation.

President Bush has not really registered
the failures in his life. When his early oil venture failed, he was bailed
out by the Saudi oil family or by his father. But when he bets all his money
on a lunatic invasion of Iraq, no one can bail him out. During his debates
with Kerry, no one could bail him out. When Kerry told him, in front of millions
of people, that the war was wrongly begun, wrongly planned, wrongly carried
out, he had to resort to making faces. There is only so much the Saudi oil
family can do.

It has become clear that the Emperor has no clothes. The Grimm
Brothers fairy story tells us that if the Emperor’s people report that
the Emperor is well-dressed, all the people standing around will swear they
see the same thing. But his nakedness became visible during those amazingly
vivid Bush-Kerry debates. The Emperor’s lack of clothes is part of
a larger failure.

We all know the invasion of Iraq was a hare-brained act,
a colossal mistake. The dissolving of the Iraq army was another mistake,
which Bremer himself admitted last week. But President Bush will not admit
his mistakes.

It’s hard to believe that the President and the voters
cannot see Disaster when it’s brought up close to their faces. Our
nation with its collapsing schools, its failing factories, its huge increase
of poverty, is a sight just as vivid. If voters can close their eyes to this
daily disaster, why not to the huge disaster happening to the United States
Army?

Hoping for the best is an adolescent characteristic. Closing your eyes
to your own addiction is a childish response. Choosing a self-deceptive hero
in a crisis and thanking him for lying to you about the world belongs to
that Disneyland immaturity for which the theme parks are famous.

Leaders need
an instinct for truth. Not to be able to take in truth leads to artificial
universes, to hundreds of soldiers in the coffin and millions of demoralized
citizens.

During a few months in 2000 and 2001, the New York Times Magazine
was full of essays arguing that the United States was the natural inheritor
of the Roman and British empires. Our production capacity, the military bases
we have all over the world, our elaborate economy, make us a natural to take
over the reins of empire, and drive the teams of empire horses. The argument
seemed so logical at the time. But it turns out we can’t control the
horses. Given our ruined schools, our devastated Flint, Michigans, our millions
of working people worried over the next paycheck, how could we possibly create
the ingenious, studious, many-sided intelligences needed to guide an empire?

After a few months of grandiosity and falling statues, the test results come
in. After rumsfelding our way down the river, the waterfall suddenly appears.
George W. Bush is not exactly a fool; he is a representative of our enlarged
ability to lie to ourselves. SUVs represent our ability to lie to ourselves
about the abundance of oil. Many Democrats drive SUVs.

We have all participated
in the national illusion and self-pleasing prevarication that a C-student
can guide the country in a time of complicated issues, that a mule can win
the Kentucky Derby, that a man who doesn’t read books can guide the
fate of nations. Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn gives a metaphor for all
that in his pair the Duke and the King. They pretend to be secret royalty,
but Mark Twain knows they would eventually be hurried out of town in tar
and feathers. In Iraq, we are the King and the Duke; let’s stop lying
about it. We’ll be lucky to get out of town alive.